The growing need to teach about complementary and alternative medicine: Questions and challenges

With the increased popularity of complementary and alternative medicine (CA M), there is a growing interest in the topic among physicians, residents, a nd medical students, who feel an increased need to have proper instruction about CAM therapies. Medical schools and residency programs are starting to respond to this demand, having realized that to provide better care and fo ster an improved patient-doctor relationship, physicians should become info rmed consultants, and be able to provide educated advice about CAM to their patients and help them integrate any CAM therapies shown to be safe and ef fective into their health care. The authors acknowledge that opinions diffe r about the adequacy of research findings to certify the safety and efficac y of specific therapies, and stress that physicians' decisions about CAM us e should be subject to the same exacting criteria employed by researchers t o evaluate any new therapies. The authors report on CAM curriculum developments in Germany, Canada, and t he United States that illustrate various approaches to the question, "What should De taught in a CAM course?" In most cases, the approach is to teach about CAM therapies, although in others, therapies that the curriculum plan ners considered useful and safe are being integrated into the medical curri culum.